The AF - I did say it was fast... and it is... very fast... but it does sometimes miss. Whle there is a "center" focus (which is what I'm using), it isn't a "spot" focus like I'd prefer. I tried to shoot a big alligator yesterday that was at an angle to my position... his head was closer to me than his body. I attempted to focus on his head and then recompose to get the rest of his body in the frame and I wound up with photos where his body was in focus and not his head. I tried backing off on the zoom so that I only had to move the camera a bit to recompose. Still... body in focus, not head. I think a real "spot" focus would not have done this. It was almost like the camera was trying to correct me and get what IT thought I wanted in focus. It was wrong.

That surprises me. Have you tried AE/AF lock?

I used AF Lock when I was using Manual Focus to quickly acquire focus before tweaking with the focus ring, but haven't tried it with Auto Focus. I will though... thanks for the suggestion.